Welcome

Welcome. I’m glad you’ve stopped by!

I wish we could sit down and chat with a warm cup of coffee and some fresh chocolate chip cookies as you stopped by my little apartment with its view of the Hudson river. I’d ask you questions about life, we’d get deep, and then my son would wake up, come out, smile, and we’d all share joy and laughter.

Life is good.

I’m Amy, and I love people. I love asking the deep questions and moving together toward health and healing. I love sharing this journey we call life, and I blog about it here.

About five years ago, I finished my 350-page dissertation on rites of passage for Christian women (I made that a link even though no normal person ever reads dissertations). It had about ONE page that had practical implications, and that has become my life-work.

I empower women to freely be the woman God created them to be.

When I was about sixteen, a pastor told me to be less assertive and strong because otherwise I’d never find a husband. Mom says I came home saying I couldn’t deny who I really was in order to please others.

But my husbandless twenties left me wondering about who I was. Not about whether I was assertive or strong, but about my identity as a woman. I had only understood womanhood in the roles of wife and mother, roles I did not have.

Are you like me?

Have you wondered about your identity as a woman?

I invite you to a journey of transformation. It’s a journey you’re already on, though you may not know it. It’s the journey of womanhood, a journey that continues throughout this life. We are all at different spots on the journey, and yet we can journey together.

And now the Book of Womanhoodis available to everyone! It contains bits and pieces of the stories that make my life and my womanhood—travel, study, teaching—and bits and pieces of my friends’ and students’ stories, too.

Mostly, it’s a guide that helps us understand ourselves as women, using the framework of relationship with God, self, others and creation.

It’s a flexible framework. Its purpose is to inspire you to think, not to tell you to change yourself to please others. In fact, as you read, I hope that you realize being a woman is simply figuring out how to fully be yourself, not fulfilling some kind of “womanly role.”